– so it probably won’t come as a surprise that I disagreed quite strongly with Prof. Berger ! You can read my full response on that link, but the reason for this post is to present some new evidence that I was right.

Just yesterday, Dr Sean Olive posted a comment on my old site with a link to research he has done on the same subject, which

(a) is fully documented (unlike Professer Berger’s work) and

(b) draws the exact opposite conclusion !

The high-school students who took part in his tests preferred the sound of CD over mp3, and can hear the difference between very high quality speakers and less accurate models.

In fact, 67% of the people who took part in his test preferred CD audio.

For more detail I recommend you scroll through the PDF embedded above, or read Sean’s full article here:

Edit to add – several people have rightly pointed out that this is a promotional piece for Harman. Yes, it is. But the testing and methodology are sound, so I’m inclined to trust the conclusions . And yes, the “preferred” speaker is made by Harman – but personally, if a speaker manufacturer is going out of it’s way to prove that better speakers are desirable, and happen to sell a few along the way – I’m all for it !

Edit #2 – Sean has collected more data supporting the findings of the first study – you can read about it here. He has also submitted an AES paper with his findings.